NR | Chapter 8

I had thought Tian Yuqing would arrange for me to ride in the same car as him, but I never expected him to put me in the second car and get into the first one himself. I squinted and stole a glance into the first car, only to find an old man sitting in the back row, his beard already white with age.

I found that odd. Why was there an elderly man in the group? He was already so old, and yet he still had to endure such a bumpy trip. That seemed pretty inhumane. I had no idea what kind of rule this was.

Not entirely willing, I clambered into the back of the second car. That wooden box, too, I had no idea what kind of wood it was made from. It was damned heavy. I was especially careful, afraid the lock wouldn’t hold and the things inside would get shattered, so getting it into the car was a real struggle.

Just after I shut the door, before I’d even caught my breath, I heard someone pat my shoulder from the back seat.

“Hello! 你好呀!”

I set the wooden box down and turned sideways to look. There was another boy in the car, holding a notebook in both hands, grinning at me with his tiger teeth bared. He looked a little younger than me and was wearing one of those down jackets with a fur collar.

I wasn’t the outgoing type. Back in college, I joined clubs just to scrape together credits and never took the initiative to interact with people. That didn’t mean I was bad at dealing with them, though. I was just too lazy to put in the effort.

Since everyone in this car had been brought here by Tian Yuqing, they must have had some connection to him. Tian Yuqing was too deep for me to read, but I should still be able to pry a few words out of a kid who looked sixteen or seventeen.

So I took the initiative and held out my hand with a smile. “Hello, my name is Gan Ji. Did you come here with Tian Yuqing and the others?”

When Tiger Teeth saw how friendly I was, he froze for a moment, then grinned and shook my hand. “Yeah, yeah, but I’m different from them. I’m not a kanyu shi[[1]], I can’t read the land. Brother Yuqing asked me to come help keep records.”

This guy couldn’t keep a secret to save his life. I hadn’t even started working on him and he spilled everything at once. His name was He Yu, and he was a great-grandchild from the Sichuan He family of “Wen Bi Lu.”[[2]]

The legend of “Wen Bi Lu” had been passed down for a long time, traceable as far back as the Shang and Zhou dynasties. But that legend itself had little to do with this matter, and putting it here would only make things feel cluttered, so I’ll leave it aside for now.

The He family and the Tian family had been close for many years, and the Tian ancestors were orthodox kanyu shi[[1]], so naturally they were the type who paid the most attention to records. That was why the two families usually acted together. He Yu was one of the younger members of the family, and this was his first time coming along, so he was especially enthusiastic.

He Yu told me that the old man in the first car was Master Tian Xiao, Tian Yuqing’s grandfather, and that Tian Yuqing’s cousin Tian Tinghan was also in that car. He Yu said that ever since Tian Xiao handed everything over to Tian Yuqing, Tian Tinghan had been dissatisfied with him, and this time he had stubbornly followed along anyway.

Then the first car was definitely full of scheming and snide remarks. If that was the case, then Tian Yuqing keeping me off the first car really was for my own good. Compared to me as an out-of-town relative, he had to deal with a grandson like that, and thinking about it like that, I suddenly started feeling a little sorry for him.

Once the vehicles got onto the highway, they followed the navigation completely. After leaving Henan, they headed straight for the Jiangsu-Zhejiang region. Our driver was pretty easygoing, and very frankly told me that he himself wasn’t too clear on the destination either. The navigation had been set the moment he got in the car.

I had driven south once or twice myself, and judging from the route, we seemed to be heading for northern Jiangsu. He Yu was clearly much more relaxed than I was. He wrote in his notebook for a while, then reclined his seat and fell asleep.

I touched the empty seat beside me and leaned my head against the window, thinking. Before getting in the car, I had carefully observed this group. Every seat in the front and rear vehicles that could hold a person was full, and even the seats that couldn’t be used for people had been taken up by luggage and those big black boxes.

If that was how they’d arranged things, then who was the seat next to me being left open for? Tian Yuqing had said he was going east. Was he going to see someone?

After thinking it over for a while, I decided it was pointless to keep guessing blindly. I wasn’t going to figure anything out that way.

I copied He Yu and lay down to sleep as well. I didn’t have trouble falling asleep or any habit of being picky about beds. Once I lay down, I quickly drifted off.

I don’t know how long I slept before I suddenly felt the car jolt violently, then slowly come to a stop. I opened my eyes and checked my phone. It was already past midnight. I’d slept for about five hours, and the car had stopped at the entrance of an unnamed alley.

“Are we here?” He Yu mumbled from behind me, still half asleep.

I pulled my clothes tighter around myself and felt a little cold. I watched the driver in the front seat press down on his earpiece and listen for a while, then turn around to tell me, “Young Master Gan, the boss says to bring your things and get out with them.”

As soon as he finished speaking, I saw people from the front car getting out one after another. In the end, even Tian Xiao was carried down from the car and put into a wheelchair.

I leaned out to look. The surroundings here were completely unfamiliar, pitch black, with the occasional bark of a dog drifting over. I felt a little uneasy, but the automatic door had already opened, so I could only force myself to grab the wooden box and get out.

Tian Xiao was waiting not far ahead. I felt awkward and quickly trotted over. “Hello, Grandpa Tian.”

Tian Xiao nodded but said nothing. It was far too dark to make out his expression, and I only heard him say to Tian Yuqing, who had opened the door and gotten out from the front passenger seat:

“Yuqing, you take him to go invite the person first. I walk slowly.”

Tian Xiao was from the older generation of kanyu shi[[1]]. Even just hearing his voice, I could feel the pressure of a seasoned veteran radiating from head to toe. Tian Yuqing walked in front of me, and I followed him, quickly picking up speed as we headed toward the depths of the alley first.

After we’d gotten a fair distance away, I asked, “Invite who?”

Tian Yuqing didn’t answer. He waited until we’d gone farther before taking out a cigarette from his pocket and lighting it. He handed one to me as well, but I didn’t smoke or drink, so I waved it off.

He sighed and said as he walked, “We’ve got an archaeology project assigned from above, and it has something to do with the box in your hands. The research value of this project is extremely significant. I’ll tell you the specific details later. For now, I can tell you what we’re here to do.”

Tian Yuqing took a drag from the cigarette. “Has your grandfather ever mentioned the wandering Yin Pozi[[3]], one of the Five Masters?”

I froze, but he didn’t seem to expect a reply from me and kept going.

“A few days ago, your fourth brother led the first team into that tomb and brought a lot of people in with him. But the scholars in their team are now running into a very difficult problem. We’re the follow-up support team, and we need to send some experts who know the field down there to solve it.

“Yu Jingzi searched the whole country without finding anything, but recently there’s been word in the Jiangsu-Zhejiang area about descendants of Yin Pozi. Later, he sent people to investigate and roughly marked out a place where she often appears. Yin Pozi may not be orthodox, but among the Five Masters, her attainments rank first.”

Tian Yuqing finished the cigarette and crushed it underfoot. Then he looked back at me and said,

“This jade box and the difficulty Chen Si is currently facing are unprecedented, so we have to go ask someone for help.”